Help me cut the cord and ditch Comcast XFinity
Hey all, a project I’m working on currently in my real life is to get rid of as much Comcast as I possibly can. I’d been holding out the hope that Google Fiber would hit my neighborhood so I could just move over that direction, but that’s years off if it happens and nobody offers anything unlimited at a broadband level speed in my area.
I realized with the XFinity X1 service my bill has gone from a $99 intro rate to over $200, the actual service is abysmal (fast forward getting “stuck” because it couldn’t connect to a server, unable to view DVR when cable is out, random unexplained delays of up to a minute in doing operations such as viewing the guide or changing a channel).
There’s also Comcast, who hires people I’m pretty sure are given orders to screw up anything I ask them to do (I wanted to add PAC-12, they added a completely unrelated service, downed my TV for 20 hours, wasted three hours of my time having me jump through hoops to get things back to the way it was before I called them). Actually I’d be willing to deal with 1/10th of the speed I get just to be rid of them, but there’s nobody where I live that does that.
So anyway, to the extent I can be I want to be away from them, however there are some caveats in the form of functionality and services I want/need and I’m not sure what’s out there to enable me to do this, which is why I’m asking for help.
If at all possible I’d like to keep close to live versions Comedy Central, local stations, E! (wife,) Sprout (kiddos,) and retain the ability to DVR any of them in one place. I’d rather this all be combined some way so I don’t have 15 remote controls and end up playing tech support over the phone when someone wants to change from an internet channel to a live.
I’m sure there’re products out there that do this, I’m just not particularly familiar with what’s the best hardware/software solution or who offers what content.
Also I’m not interested in the method of calling and threatening to cancel. I really want as far away as possible, and their business internet lines are where I’d like to land.
Suggestions?
